Abstract The ecosystem services provided by urban trees make substantial contributions to the urban environments. However, many of these ecosystem services are strongly connected to tree size and health which means that right tree for site and climate is essential. Whilst most urban forestry literature focuses on finding “the right tree for the right place” by describing the variation in physiological traits at the species level, many species also show substantial intraspecific variation in their traits at the level of the organ, such as leaf economic traits or wood density. The question is how well do the nursery industry that support us with trees acknowledge this fact. The aim of this study was to investigate to what extent provenance and ecotypes is understood within the largest tree nurseries in Germany, Netherlands and the UK. We identified five tree species commonly planted within urban forests in central and northern Europe and carried out a brief analysis of the climatic envelopes experienced by them in their natural range. We then carried out short interviews with nursery representatives to examine whether it is possible to identify which ecotypes of these species are represented in commercial horticulture. The results show that in the large majority of cases (63 %), provenance knowledge was unknown. In some cases (11–12 %), the nurseries identified sources at the country level (e.g. Netherlands or Germany). None of the nurseries in the study hade any information from which ecotypes their material originated from. The principal finding of this study is that it is not currently possible for specifiers to select trees at an intra-specific level based on climate or ecological criteria since it is of the utmost importance that the plant material that is used is of the best possible fit with the target site.

中文翻译：

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我们对城市树木的起源了解多少？– 北欧视角

摘要 城市树木提供的生态系统服务对城市环境做出了重大贡献。然而，许多这些生态系统服务与树木大小和健康密切相关，这意味着适合地点和气候的树木至关重要。虽然大多数城市林业文献侧重于通过描述物种水平的生理性状变化来寻找“适合地方的合适树木”，但许多物种在器官水平上也表现出其性状的大量种内变异，例如叶经济性状或木材密度。问题是支持我们种植树木的苗圃产业如何承认这一事实。本研究的目的是调查德国、荷兰和英国最大的苗圃中对原产地和生态型的了解程度。我们确定了欧洲中部和北部城市森林中常见的五种树种，并对它们在自然范围内经历的气候包络进行了简要分析。然后，我们对苗圃代表进行了简短采访，以检查是否有可能确定这些物种的哪些生态型在商业园艺中具有代表性。结果表明，在大多数情况下 (63%)，出处知识是未知的。在某些情况下（11-12%），苗圃确定了国家层面的来源（例如荷兰或德国）。研究中的所有苗圃都没有任何关于其材料源自哪些生态型的信息。